40 Years of Fear and Loathing
Forty years ago this election cycle, Hunter S. Thompson was embedded with the George McGovern campaign, reporting for Rolling Stone on McGovern’s effort to unseat the incumbent Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential election. Thompson’s writings on the campaign and its aftermath were compiled into the book Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72. […]
The New Gatekeepers
Democracy has come to creativity, and capitalism has come to overwhelm democracy. I am, of course, talking about the Amazon review scandal that has come to light, revealing that as many as 1/3 of all reviews on Amazon were bought and paid for. This is a catastrophe for everyone involved — musicians, writers, consumers, and […]
A New Bag for Old Tricks: I Attempt an Audiobook
The other night I set up mic, mixer, and preamp to record a couple of demos of new songs, and I figured, “Hey, why not try to make an audiobook?” It seemed easy enough. It’s been awhile, but I’ve been paid actual money in the past for voice over work and I know how to […]
Different Writing Muscles
Different kinds of writing require different brain muscles. I’ve been reminded of this recently as I’ve started exercising my prose muscles for the first time in a while. My first ambition, as I remember, was to be a professional novelist, back when I was small and green and the world could grow such things. I […]
Anybody Else Tired of Personal Branding?
One of my favorite lines of poetry is from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself, where he writes: Do I contradict myself?Very well then I contradict myself,(I am large, I contain multitudes.) This guy: sweaty-toothed madman,hates branding. As artists and human beings, we should probably be trying to embrace diversity, and what better place to start than […]
Great Album Reviews: The Milk-Eyed Mender (Joanna Newsom)
Album: The Milk-Eyed MenderArtist: Joanna NewsomGenre: FolkYear: 2004 Joanna Newsom plays harp and sings. When my five-year-old first heard her in the car, after about ten seconds he said “Oh! What a terrible voice!” Probably any discussion of Joanna Newsom has to include, somewhere, the mention that her voice isn’t for everybody. And now that’s […]
A Letter to the Greatest Movie of All Time
Yesterday saw the release of the once-a-decade BFI Sight & Sound poll of nearly 1,000 film critics, distributors, academics, and others. For the first time in five decades, Citizen Kane did not top the list. Instead, my favorite movie, the movie that made me want to make movies, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, claimed the top spot. I’ve […]